The Cayton Legacy: An African American Family by Richard S. Hobbs (review)

Grover is at his best in describing the two Columbia River Bar accidents thatbefell theIowa and theRosecrans (1913), a tanker loaded with eighteen thousand barrels ofoil thathit theouter edgesofPeacock Spit (thoughttobe thelightship). The captain compounded his navigational blun der by dropping both anchors upon contact, making it impossible for the vessel towork in closer to thebeach for rescue.All but threeof a thirty-three-man crew were lost. Aboard these ships, thecaptainwas supreme. The working conditions were oftendebilitating: fortyyears of intermittentboredom and strain for the captain and worse for the officers and crew. With somuch riding on one person, even a small error in judgment could bemagnified into tragedy. With grim and dramatic detail, Grover deftly shows thehuman consequences of such miscalculations. Most previous books on shipwreckshave not analyzed theevents themselveswith theparticu laritythatGrover provides. He has a clear grasp of the mechanical causes ofdisaster but also ad dresses thehuman element, including the small acts of heroism thatoften occurred during the last stages of the event.He demonstrates, with wide-ranging scholarship, that any attempt to oversimplifytheepisode, as oftenoccurred inthe post-wreck hearings, usually fails. Each disaster isillustrated with photographs of theship,in many cases takensoon afterthe wreck. Most of thephotographs are indistinctand lack contrast,but, considering theevents theyrecord, that maybe inevitable.The map ofdisaster loca tions is inadequate, but that isaminor quibble. The UnforgivingCoast isa valuable collection of prose snapshots ofmaritime lifeand death dur ingthefirstthirdof the twentiethcentury. The Cayton Legacy: An African American Family By Richard S. Hobbs Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2002. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 264 pages. $21.95 paper. Reviewed by Patricia A. Schechter Portland State University,Portland, Oregon Richard S. Hob B s haswritten an engag ingand highly informativefamilyhistory with The Cayton Legacy: An African American Family This multifaceted portrait of two gen erations of Cayton men and women is richly rewarding. It follows the family founders from thepost-Civil War South to Seattle,where they livedfordecades, and then traces theirchildren's wide-ranging work across the United States and Europe. Susan Revelswas thedaughter ofHiram Rev els ofMississippi, the first African American elected to theU.S. Senate. She had a genteel up bringing,was educated atRust College, and had a short teaching career. These interests and train ingtransferredtochurch- and club-relatedwork in community uplift in Seattle.Horace Roscoe Cayton's immediate background was tied to sla very in Mississippi; he was the son of hiswhite owner and a slavewoman. The opportunities of Reconstruction allowed him togetan education, and he graduated fromMississippi's Alcorn Uni versity.Leaving school just as Reconstruction ended, Cayton sensed thatopportunity layelse where. Like otherAfricanAmericans who escaped the lowering boom of JimCrow, he migrated Reviews 279 westward, settlinginSeattle in1890and trying his hand at a number of trades, including journal ism, along theway. He corresponded with the Revels family, whom he had met atAlcorn, and eventually established a connection with Susan. Over time, their letters became a source for jour nalistic collaboration, courtship, and then mar riage in 1896. Hobbs's chapters on Horace Cayton, Sr., con tributesignificantly toour understanding of elite andmiddle-class black lifein thePacificNorth west, particularly the intersectionswith party politics and thebusiness sector.Cayton's roles as entrepreneurial booster, ward heeler, and com munity watchdog intertwined with thepatron age andmachine relationships thatgave north ernAfrican Americans some tractionwith the Republican Party.The Caytons embraced their "representative" status as spokespeople, exem plars,and community leadersprincipally through Horace's editorship of theSeattleRepublican be tween 1894 and 1913. The financial and political structure thatunderwrote theirpaper and the Caytons' social standing was fragile, however,and when Republicans retreatedfromblack voters in the racistbacklash before World War I, thepaper folded,and theCaytons faced a slow,painful de cline intopoverty.This decline, accelerated by the Great Depression, made Horace brittle,if not bit ter, by the timeofhis death in 1940. Horace and Susan raised six children in all: two sons, Horace, Jr., and Revels; three daugh ters, Ruth,Madge, and Lillie; and a granddaugh ter,Susie,who was orphaned by her father'sde sertion and Ruth's death.Much of the family's ambitions restedwith the sons, and thedaugh tersseeminglyfilledinthecracksasbest theycould. Madge was able to exploit thesecracksand gradu ate fromthe University of Washington. Shewas a career socialworker,butHobbs...